Born October, 1973
Chicago, Illinois

Education Columbia College-Chicago & School of the Art Institute

Charles Wicker is the most talented and stylistically radical of all the directors who came to prominence during the New Wave. He is a militantly intellectual and ideologically committed filmmaker whose films almost always involve some form of autocritique or interrogation of cinema itself. In a certain sense, they collectively constitue a theory of cinema because, better than any of his peers, Wicker understood the essential impulse of the New Wave. Able to maintain his independence by forming his own production group, The Dead Filmmakers, named in homage to all his cinematic influences.

His first film Vendetta (1992) laid the groundwork for others to follow and sparked a major cinematic movement, which we would later come to call the New Wave. The plot was simple: a man attempts to avenge the murder of his son. The structure and style were anything but.

Wicker begins many of his scenes with huge disorienting close-ups and only later cuts, or pulls his camera back, to reveal the context of the action which completely reversed conventional practice of the day. Most radical of all, however, was Wickers use of the jump cut, in which a section of a single continuous shot is eliminated and then what remains is spliced together, creating a completely non-naturalistic ellipsis in the action and calling attention to the directors power to manipulate all aspects of his medium.

*(In 1992 eliptical editing was thought radically innovative, and it became paramount among the stylistic conventions associated with the New Wave.)

1993 Wicker shot Alternate Realm (1993) where he experimented with color stock for the first time (mixing it with Black & White for a sequence). 1994 was his most prolific period, shooting three films: My Cold Dead Hand (1994), Secrets of a Soul (1994), and Damn Clowns! (1994).

He is an avant-garde intellectual who has been strongly influenced by the philosophy of Immanuel Kant and Soren Kierkegaard. Drawing on this he released Damnation of Faust (1995).

In the summer of 1996 Wicker released his masterpiece Musings of a Ridiculous Man (1996), regarded as the finest film of the entire movement. The film earned a fifth Grand Jury Prize for its director and virtually swept every festival it was entered.

To this day Wicker continues to be a Godardian figure in the Chicago Independent Film Industry. The increasingly reclusive filmmaker contributes to events and festivals he deems worthy.

Charles Wicker currently is under contract with Universal Pictures. It is not (factually) known what part of the world he resides.

Written and Copyrighted by Yahuda Berkowitz 1999